In The
Heart Of The Heart Of Another Country consists of 7 essays connected with Etel
Adnanfs engagement – as a writer / woman / Lebanese-American / emigrant /
Arab/ immigrant / artist /
Non-Arab / intelligence / etc – with the Middle Eastern world.It is a beautiful and profound read.

Ranging
from memoir, to T.E.Lawrence, to the final piece [eTo Be In A Time Of Warf]
which consists only of sentences beginning with an infinitive], Adnanfs eye
captures experience with simplicity, variety, and clarity.Her historical insights appear as
responses to & extrapolations from the details of life: organic,
believable, pure – and this is the joy of it.The reader is taken to the site of the telling not through
force or agreement with the authorfs dogma but through the heart & the eye.

What is
revealed is a world [or sensibility] that overcomes war, bigotry, through the
imperative of being.Itfs
impossible to write about displacement or the Middle East or history without
being subjective.The problem is
that most writers give the impression of aiming to be objective and of course
arenft.Etel Adnanfs insights and
beautiful writing allow the reader into the new [for most readers] world being
described [hence the title], show a world that is both immanent and eternal,
and affirm the victory of the individual [though not all individuals, of
course] over the forces that wish to compromise the meaning of being here, now,
human. You decide who they are.